This article is taken from the
Figaro Hors-série Vermeer, painting silence
.
In this special issue, discover the Dutch Golden Age, the life and work of the Delft prodigy, on the occasion of the largest retrospective ever organized on Vermeer, at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Vermeer!
His destiny looks like an enchantment.
It is born from who knows what dawn, its sky is full of stars at all hours of the day and its women's faces cross its backlighting.
They slip into his work, from one to another, move away, die out, are reborn elsewhere, merged into one.
They are omnipresent in his painting.
They have the leading role.
Except in two paintings:
The Astronomer
(1668) and
The Geographer
(1669).
Despite a difference of three centimeters in height, these two paintings may have formed the pendants of a whole.
In any case, they represent the same male character, alone, in an almost identical setting.
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The astronomer, dressed in an indoor robe, is seated in profile in front of his table covered with a patterned carpet like that of
La Dentellière
.
In front of him, a closed window, with emblazoned stained glass.
In this interior, which is not far from those that Vermeer used to paint, a hushed light preserves the penumbra, enveloping the scientist in a halo of expectation and mystery, placing his right hand on a celestial globe.
On the table, in full light, an open book and a brass compass.
In the far left of the room stands, in massive shadow, a narrow and deep cupboard.
On the upper panel of the cabinet hangs a planisphere with dials and hands marking angles.
But this is not what holds the attention of historians.
What intrigues and opposes them is on the central panel of the cupboard: a date, 1668, and a signature, IVMeer.
Was the date and signature affixed by Vermeer's hand?
There are pros, there are cons.
They always discuss it.
And for a long time yet.
On the wall, on the right of the room, hangs a painting,
Moses saved from the waters
, which will appear in the
Woman writing a letter and her servant
.
Moses who guided the Jews and led them to the Promised Land.
Is it a symbolic value for the Dutch spectator who considered the United Provinces as a new Israel?
This painting does not exalt the Copernican revolution.
Nor does it mention the great discoveries and progress of science.
It is not the hidden praise of Huygens, discoverer of a satellite of Saturn.
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Vermeer is an interior man, hardly moving from his house, preferring the intimacy of walls, the dreams, the secrets they contain.
In this closed room, completely closed to the outside, folded in on itself, where the light of day enters, cautious, breaking in, the whole universe is concentrated on the celestial globe.
This chromatic meditation unfolds its scrupulous arrangement like a Wagnerian prelude to an opera that will never be performed.
For Vermeer, the main thing is not to describe the world but to suggest a universe, outside of time and history.
In this chiaroscuro, maintained throughout this pictorial monologue by the magic of images and the spell of a precise style, the painter maintains a climate of mystery and suspense.
It's a new poetic time.
That of intuition, visited by a state of grace.
This new time, this magic hour, we find them in the other painting,
The Geographer
, where the date – 1669 – and Vermeer's signature stand out distinctly on the wall.
This time, historians agree: they are authentic.
A restoration of the work confirmed this.
And here is the same man as the one in
L'Astronome
, in the same room, with the same furniture, the same closed window.
The geographer wears the same housecoat as that worn by the astronomer.
But who is this mysterious character?
The experts rushed to this new enigma.
Without resolving it.
It was assumed that it was a self-portrait, others thought they recognized the naturalist Van Leeuwenhoek, others, finally, Spinoza.
Nothing is guaranteed.
There again, Vermeer keeps silence in the perfection of a harmony brought by a thousand chromatic symphonies.
In the confidence of a secret that must not be revealed.
Vermeer, painting silence
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Le Figaro Store
.
The Girl Reading a Letter in Front of an Open Window
, by Vermeer, c.1657-1658 Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
SEE ALSO
- Vermeer exhibition: the retrospective of the century